


The Grey Wolf

by beautifultoastdream



Category: Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: BroTP: Big Swords and Booze, Fenris in mourning, Fenris joins the Grey Wardens, Fenris-centric, Gen, Grey Wardens, Mentions of Suicide, Oghren is rude and therapeutic, angsty but humorous
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-06-04 05:10:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6642586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beautifultoastdream/pseuds/beautifultoastdream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Hawke is left in the Fade, Fenris finds himself adrift and in mourning. But a chance meeting with a hungover dwarf on the road to Denerim may suggest another path back towards himself--and perhaps, towards Hawke. Provided, of course, that he can actually put up with Oghren's company for that long.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Grey Wolf

**Author's Note:**

> This is a one-shot, though I may write a sequel following up on this idea. I struggled with Fenris's voice in this, but I do feel that he would be relatively lost if Hawke was left in the Fade; he needs a friend, and preferably an uncomplicated one who's been-there-done-that regarding lost loved ones and futile anger. Enjoy!

Loot: An old red scarf. Travel-stained and frayed, but still carefully preserved.

 

* * *

 

Perhaps Fenris should have known it would end that way. He's had no good luck with his masters, after all—and while his Hawke was no magister, she was in some ways a truer master than Danarius could have been. Her scarf, the favor she gave him one night now so long past, binds him more strongly and sweetly than shackles or lyrium. But now she, too, is dead, and he is adrift again.

With little but furious grief to drive him, he goes first to Skyhold. He knows that he must kill _something_ or lose what's left of his soul, and the traitorous Inquisitor is as good a target as any. Or perhaps he will indulge in a little of Hawke's favorite pastime and twist his target into mental knots before the final blow lands: he does not have Hawke's ready tongue and serpentine wit, but he knows how to identify a weakness, and the thrice-cursed Lavellan has a wonderfully appropriate one in the form of her own beloved human. She killed the woman he loved, so perhaps he will kill her man in return. Then a pair of tattooed bereaved elves can fight to the death, and Varric can sell tickets … 

_Venhedis._ He is a fool.

By the time he reaches Skyhold, he has no plan, only rage and sorrow that cannot sustain him through such a challenge. The human, a surprisingly familiar Templar, does not die. The Inquisitor's honesty rips him to pieces, and his words flay her in return. _Coward,_ she calls him. _Dalish magister,_ he accuses her. The two of them retreat to think bitter thoughts and plan their own wars. 

She goes to face Corypheus.  He  goes … somewhere else.

It galls him, a little, to stand outside himself and see how purposeless he has become.  Even the never-ending fights against Tevinter slavers  seem token and hollow. The memories of his enslavement still burn, and he still wakes gasping from nightmares of Danarius's hands in his hair, Danarius's collar around his throat, but his time with Hawke blunted those demons' fangs somewhat and  no slaver has yet learned to guard against a hand that can reach right through solid armor.  It is no longer enough of a distraction to sustain him alone.

And so, he drifts.  In the world  around him, months pass.  Corypheus falls and the lands celebrate the Inquisition, but Fenris simply keeps walking.  Anything to put as many miles as possible between himself and his memories.

When he  comes to his senses again, he  remembers that he is in Ferelden . Ferelden , where Hawke was born, where she  was forced to flee across the sea. 

Kirkwall became her home, but Ferelden was where she began, and he knows she still kept a place in her heart for it.  The enormous mabari constantly dogging (hah) her heels was proof enough of that.

He cannot go back to Kirkwall.  A n army of Archdemons could not get him to the City of Chains again, not with the memories that linger there. Orlais and Tevinter are unthinkable, and there is nothing for him in Antiva or Nevarra.  He is done with mercenary work, with bodyguarding, with  anything that might bring him within  shouting distance of the powerful or the noble . Ferelden, though, is exactly as rough-edged and muddy as Hawke had said, and  he finds its ugliness soothing.  People speak their minds here, and their accents are torturously, sweetly familiar.  He has lost Hawke, and his heart is as good as carved out, but he finds some little comfort in the land that birthed her.  It has a peacefulness of its own.

Well, most of it.

He meets the dwarf on the road outside Denerim.  He doesn't know why he is going to Denerim, only that it lies along the road he is walking and it is a large enough city to have the kind of criminals he can pick off for easy coin.  Merchants, knights, servants, craftsmen, paupers, farmers, Dalish in their landships (some of those giving him odd looks as they pass, calling out to him in an ancestral tongue he does not speak), all pass along the road to Denerim for one reason or another. The dwarf, though, he meets quite literally  _on_ the road.

“What a shock,” he observes to himself, looking down. “A drunk dwarf blocking traffic.”

That's not entirely fair: the carts roll on, unconcerned, though those on foot do find themselves detouring around the armored lump lying in the mud. The lump groans and makes a gesture considered unacceptably obscene in at least four countries.

“Sod off,” a voice says from somewhere around knee-height. “ 'm not drunk.”

“My apologies,” Fenris says gravely. “Hungover, then.”

“Closer.” The dwarf reluctantly cracks one eye open. “Oh, what a shock. A sarcastic elf askin' to be c hopped down to size.”

“You'll have your work cut out for you, then.”

With an effort, the dwarf opens the other eye. It takes almost a full minute, but he manages to get both eyes to focus on Fenris.  Fenris himself waits patiently, because this is not an unpleasant distraction. If the dwarf dies, he can pick his pockets, and if the dwarf tries to kill him,  Fenris can gut hi m and then pick his pockets. 

( It's the kind of thing Hawke would joke about, after those late nights in the Hanged Man when they were both staggering back towards Hightow n, full  of  good spirits and not entirely unpalatable alcohol.  A noble soul, but a magpie who loved nothing better than rifling through her enemies' pockets.  Here, he still isn't sure if he is actually joking, but coin is coin and this dwarf looks three-quarters dead already. )

But to his surprise, the dwarf actually stands up. He swallows, makes a face, and spits a horrifyingly impressive collection of  sticky dark fluid onto Fenris's bare feet. “ Elves,” the dwarf grunts. “Think you're so sodding clever.  Never met a one of you could actually swing yer own sodding weight or hold yer own sodding drink.  Go kiss a Keeper's arse and leave me alone before I feed you yer own sodding ears.”

And, because Fenris has never been one to worry about offending and he's never seen anyone—not even a dwarf—actually stand upright despite having apparently bathed in Golden Scythe 4:90 Black, he says “If you can reach them.”

The dwarf's eyebrows draw together like thunderclouds, and he looks Fenris in the eye for the first time. He skates over the tattoos without comment, but whatever he was going to say is halted when his gaze snags on the greatsword hilt showing over Fenris's shoulder. He laughs, a sound like rocks being crunched together. “An cestor s' big bouncy tits!” he says. “A sarcastic elf with a Blade of sodding Mercy!  That's a nice piece of cutlery. Who'd you have to hump to get your hands on that pretty bit?”  He leers and prepares to spit another mouthful of miscellaneous fluids.

“ The Champion of Kirkwall.”

The mouthful goes down instead of up, and  the  dwarf  is back on his knees in the mud, coughing and laughing and swearing all at once. Fenris waits, arms crossed and face impassive, while  the dwarf expels a lungful of phlegm, vomits once or twice, and  wipes his mouth on his beard. 

“I like you, skinny,” he announces without preamble. “ Might not actually kill you now. You've got  S tone in your stones.  Where you headed?”

Fenris glances at the horizon before responding.  The city is looming on the very edge of the world, just a low dark mass of towers and walls.  If he  were an ordinary man  looking for  ordinary  distractions—fights, drinks, prostitutes, easy pickings, perhaps a cause or two—then the city w ould  surely have them in abundance. 

He doesn't need to tell this odiferous stranger anything.  But his  insides are still hollowed with grief, and  while Denerim may provide distractions aplenty,  there are few distractions more distant from  his grief than a still-inebriated dwarf who smells like a flatulent brewery burning down and  yet somehow recognizes a Blade of Mercy hundreds of miles from Minrathous. 

“ Denerim,” he says.

They walk the rest of the way into the city together. Fenris has to shorten his strides to keep from outpacing the dwarf,  and Oghren  ( that's his name, Oghren, a name like the noise Fenris can't help making when he's faced with fish stew )  notices and calls him a whining beardless nancy-boy who thinks a real man can't keep up with him.  Fenris just cocks an eyebrow at him and asks whether his depth perception has come back yet. It hasn't.

Dusk has fallen when they pass through the gates. Fenris makes ready to peel off, looking for a cheap inn or an abandoned cellar where he can curl up for the night, but Oghren yanks on his arm. “What's the matter, bored of me already?” the dwarf gr unts . “ I know a place—“

Fenris's first instinct is to lash out. It took Hawke years to break him of flinching from her touch, and even then, she knew better than to grab him roughly by the arm. The lyrium blazes to life, running in blue-white stripes of light from fingertips to elbow.

Kaffas, kaffas, kaffas, now he's done it!  His looks are distinctive enough without displaying something  no Dalish tattoo ca n do, and with Varric's damned book everywhere, he has few illusions that he will ever pass completely unnoticed again. And worse, in front of a dwarf! Dwarves, especially dwarves clearly not born on the surface, can practically smell lyrium. His fist tightens automatically.

Oghren  spits  again . “Nice trick,” he says. “Shiny and all.  Now I want the Champion story  _and_ a drink. You're buying.”

Fenris blinks as the light fades—with effort—from his tattoos. “I am?” he says sharply. “Are you trying to blackmail me, dwarf?”

“Nah, I'm just thirsty. And my boss gets the sad face when I drink alone, so you buy us both a round and we'll play 'Whose Life is Weir der .'  Bet I win.”

At that, Fenris can't hold back a startled snort of laughter. “You 'l l lose.”

“ Nah. I'm gonna win.”

He loses. “ I can walk through walls” is a trump card to end all trump cards.  B ut somewhere around the eleventh round, Fenris is forced to admit that it's a close thing, and graciously cedes the crown of “Worst  Breakup Story .” 

 

* * *

 

_You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here._

 

\--Graffiti in The Tinker's Arse, Denerim

 

* * *

 

Oghren is a Grey Warden.  Fenris isn't sure if that's a point in the Wardens' favor or a sign of how far their order has fallen, but either way, it's somehow the most  _Fereldan_ thing he's encountered so far.  If Oghren had a dog, he  would be a one-dwarf storm of perfect  turnip-eating offensiveness. 

Yet oddly enough, his offensiveness is … not particularly offensive. Fenris has been ripped to shreds by artists—first Danarius's focused vileness, then Hawke's heartbroken silence, and finally the Inquisitor's bitterly truthful accusations. Those things were all powerful in their different ways, and they were all aimed at him _,_ each time scoring direct hits like crossbow bolts. Oghren, though, is more like a free-floating bad smell: irritating and impossible to ignore, but not something you can hold a grudge against. His offensiveness (the lewd comments to barmaids, the constant vocal hankering for alcohol and/or pickled nug, the habit of cleaning his teeth with the cards he's currently dealing) is automatic and somehow lacking in bile. He simply is what he is.

Though Fenris c an do without the card  business .  Hanged Man decks were usually retired due to thrown knives and drunken accidents, not clinging bits of greasy gray meat … At least, he hopes it's  just  meat.

Over three evenings in the barroom of The Tinker's Arse, a decently-priced and only moderately violent inn near the cattle market,  Oghren's story comes out in bits and pieces. He is indeed a Grey Warden, and claims to be a close associate of the Hero of Ferelden as well (which Fenris takes  _cum grano salis_ ). He is an incompetent but desperately trying sort of family man; he has a daughter with an old flame, and writes letters to them every week, sending what coin he can scrape together.  In that he reminds Fenris of nothing so much as Hawke's Uncle Gamlen, though to his surprise, the letter he sees Oghren pen is full of more genuine—if clumsy— familial a ffection than he had seen Gamlen express in seven years  of acquaintance . 

In exchange, Fenris parcels out small p ortions of his own history. He tells the story of the Blade of Mercy, because Oghren is the kind of person who will laugh at using a  Tevinter fugitive using a  Tevinter sword to kill Tevinter soldiers, and  perhaps says more than he should about Hawke.  Fortunately, Oghren is usually too drunk to remember any candid admissions,  and  even when sober can be relied on to divert the conversation with a n obscene non sequitur . Fenris finds his company curiously restful.

Oghren is only in Denerim for a few days.  Supposedly,  he's delivering messages on behalf of the Wardens: he certainly doesn't object when Fenris accompanies him on a couple of his deliveries, which hints at a certain informal nature to his task. Most of the messages go to suspicious individuals, either extremely high or extremely low in status. It doesn't take long for Fenris to see that Oghren is wasted as a messenger—but as a threat, and not a very veiled one either, he is impeccable.  Seeing the  bleary-eyed  dwarf  scratching his ass in an arl's formal parlor is something Fenris will always remember.  He suspects the arl will too.

On Oghren's last night in the city,  the pair of them order far too much Chasind sack mead and tell war stories  and lies  until  neither of them is sure who fought the Blight and who fought the Qunari.  At the bottom of the third bottle, Fenris squints blearily across the table at Oghren.

“You,” he says, “are the first Grey Warden I haven't wanted to kill.”

Oghren burps. “ Oh, good . Do I get a shiny trophy?”

“ You get to live.”

“Hah. Like you could kill me.”

“I've killed  far worse than you ,” Fenris  growls , because  his temper frays  too  easily  these days , even with a congenial drinking companion. “ I could tear the heart from your chest in a second.”

“So? I've done the Deep Roads twice, and not a sodding second of it sober.” Oghren burps again, apparently for the fun of it. “ You want to impress me, boy, you liquor yourself up like a  discarded girlfriend  and go after a Broodmother with nothing but your teeth. Then we'll talk.”

“I beheaded an ogre.”

“I nutted an ogre. Same difference.”

“ Hardly ,” Fenris  snaps back . “ The strength of the arm— ”

“You think it doesn't take strength to go after one of those sodding things when your head's at the level of its taint, yer not much of a fighter, boy.”

And Fenris—drunk, lost, horribly homesick for a table in the Hanged Man and the  camaraderie of friends who did n' t turn away even when he clumsily broke the heart of a woman too good to live as long as she deserved—Fenris laughs until he's almost sick on the floor, and Oghren  helpfully tops up his drink with something that makes the Chasind mead curl up and whimper in the bottom of the glass.

“ You'd make a good Warden,” Oghren says at some point during the evening. Fenris blinks blearily at him.

“I'm not quite that desperate.”

“Sod desperate. You're angry and you like to hit things. That's Warden material, innit?” Oghren burps. “ Think they got any peanuts over there?”

The next morning, two hungover wanderers set out on the long road to Vigil's Keep.

 

* * *

 

“A human with a crown is like a beardless dwarf. You know they're different, but you don't know how, and if you get too close to them without permission someone's getting shot.”

 

\--Varric Tethras

 

* * *

 

 

Warden-Commander Cousland-Theirin, Queen and Hero of the Fifth Blight, slayer of the Archdemon Urthemiel,  one-woman army with a starmetal sword,  reminds Fenris of nothing so much as a bizarre cross between Aveline and Merrill.  She has neatly-braided  dark  hair and wide brown eyes,  and her  slender  build and  sweet smile are Merrill's, but she's half-buried inside a suit of armor that she wears far too easily despite the weight and she carries a sword and shield that have both seen heavy use.  Despite the Merrill face, the  stare she rakes over Fenris has a strong tinge of Aveline to it.

“ Collecting random oddities  now ?” she says  as she rises from her seat at the desk . “ I'm so sorry, Oghren. Clearly I've been a bad influence on you.”

“ You really are,” Oghren replies with something that might almost be a grin under the messy red beard. “ But it's okay, boss. I forgive ya.  Meet Fenris.”

She gives no sign that she recognizes the name, but Fenris still fights the urge to  flinch under the gaze now fully focused on him. There is the reek of command on her.  Another master, though not his. “Fenris what? Or is it just Fenris?”

“Just Fenris,” he says.

“He followed me home,” Oghren adds. “Can I keep him?” Fenris gives him the glare that once made a dozen Templars shake in their boots. Oghren ignores it.

“Maker's mercy. Oghren … You are dismissed. Very dismissed.” She makes a shooing motion at the dwarf, who grunts something about temperamental womenfolk and stumps out.

Once the door closes behind him, the Warden-Commander turns back to Fenris. “I've heard of you,” she says without preamble. “I didn't expect to find you on my doorstep, though. From what the Lady Inquisitor said, you were supposed to be dead by now.”

“I am sorry to disappoint,” Fenris replies dryly.

To his surprise, the Warden-Commander flushes red. “Oh! Maker, I didn't … argh!” She runs a hand over her face. “Forgive me. I've only just returned to this post, and I seem to have left my manners in the wilds. But according to the Lady Inquisitor's letter, the loss of the Champion of Kirkwall affected you deeply. She said she thought you might … look for ways to die.”

“She was correct. For a time.” Fenris crosses his arms, considering his next words carefully. A little Merrill, a little Aveline, and now a little Bethany: the Warden-Commander is not a woman, she is a collective of memories. “Now, I do not.”

“Congratulations, but that doesn't explain why you're here.”

“I wish to join the Wardens.”

Saying it, he feels faintly ridiculous. He was not lying when he told Oghren that the dwarf was the first Grey Warden he didn't want to kill: Warden cowardice and Warden blood magic led to Hawke's death as surely as the Inquisitor had. But the Wardens responsible for that atrocity perished at Adamant, and all that is left of them in Ferelden is a staggering corpse of an organization. The Warden-Commander will do her best, but the Wardens as they stand now are few and weak, and the world is more unstable than ever.

He has no purpose now. They are struggling to meet what little purpose they do have. But ever since the dawning of the Dragon Age, Grey Wardens have been neck-deep in whatever hideous calamity is currently assaulting Thedas. If anyone will find themselves in a position to step into the Fade again, it is a Warden, and Fenris will not be far behind them.

That, at least, is a dream. He hopes, but does not believe, that his lover is alive in the Fade somehow. He knows only that he has been hollowed out by his furious grief, that he has nowhere else to go and no mission to turn his hand to, and that a drunk dwarf describing something so disgusting it was somehow hilarious made him laugh for the first time since Hawke died.

The Warden-Commander will not hear all that, though. His reasons for anything have always been his own, and this is no different. So he settles for a piece of the truth.

“I have nothing left,” he says. “Corypheus took everything from me. If one like him rises again, I _will_ be there to stop him.”

His tone brooks no disagreement, but the Warden-Commander is not one to be intimidated. “A lot of people lost everything to Corypheus,” she tells him. She leans over her desk, one gauntlet resting lightly on a pile of papers. “But Fenris, I don't have them turning up on my doorstep to join. The Grey Wardens are in disgrace. If Alistair and I weren't Wardens ourselves, the Order would probably have been kicked out of Ferelden again, and it'd be damn well deserved. You'd be better off joining the Inquisition, or aiding the reformed Templars.”

“I want nothing to do with either of them. The Inquisition centers around a false idol and the Templars are eating themselves alive over dogma.” Fenris meets the Warden-Commander stare for stare. “I have killed Darkspawn and dragons before. You will not have trouble finding a use for me.”

It is a mark of how much has changed that he says it so easily. Once he would have flinched from words like _finding a use for me,_ thinking they marked him as property to be considered or discarded. Now he is addressing someone with more power than Danarius ever had, freely offering his blade, and he is not frightened or angry. These are strange times indeed.

“That's not what I'm worried about,” the Warden-Commander replies. “I know you're strong, Fenris—I've read the book. In Orlais, they'd probably recruit you in a heartbeat. But as weak as the Wardens are in Ferelden right now, I am the Commander of the Grey in this country, and I'm _not_ going to accept someone who might be a danger to the others under my command. So tell me this: are you going to fight? Not just to win, but to _stay alive?_ There's no room for pointless sacrifice in this order, and I'm not going to sign you up just so you can go out in a blaze of personal glory.”

Now that sounds like Aveline. He likes it.

“If you do not trust me to stay alive,” he says, “then trust me not to drag others down with me.”

She looks at him, her hand still resting on the pile of papers. Then she shakes her head and sits down. Her armor might be made of air for all it affects her, but when she drops into her chair, there is a noticeable thud of steel and dragonbone impacting wood.

“You do realize that the Joining might kill you,” she says. “It's not an easy ritual, and some recruits just … don't make it. I was the only one to survive my Joining, and the first one I ever presided over had one death in three.” She inclines her head, indicating the lines of lyrium swirled across Fenris's crossed arms. “And that? We have no precedent for that kind of thing. None at all. Mages take the Joining a little bit— _little_ bit—easier, but I can't even begin to imagine what it would do to you. It might have no effect, or it might turn you into a monstrous horror.”

“I …”

Fenris has not considered that. He looks down at his hands, momentarily seeing the lyrium there in a new light. Danarius's masterwork: the power that had made Fenris so valuable to the magister, and the power that had helped him slip his bonds and find freedom after so many tries. Though he still struggles with the memories of torture that that life left him with, he cannot regret the abilities he used to kill his former master and fight at the side of Hawke and her people. Yet it is still a magister's work, and magisters _created_ the Darkspawn. Mixing his living runecraft with the Wardens' ritual … Fenris has wanted to change who he is, sometimes, but never like _that._

He finds his voice again, with an effort. “Should that happen,” he says, “I believe you are more than capable of dealing with the consequences.”

But he had paused a little too long, and the Aveline in the Warden-Commander's face gives way to something he cannot quite place. Her look is determined but understanding, with a hint of steel in it: Hawkelike, but not Hawke's, never twisted sideways to fit through the narrow cracks in morality. Her shoulders are straight, her gaze unclouded. Fenris does not mix with royalty (not as he is now, not upright and free rather than kneeling at a magister's heel), but perhaps he might call it queenly. She has seen his moment of fear, and she finds it honest. She will hold him to his promises.

“Fenris,” she says, “welcome to the Grey Wardens.”


End file.
